Sports and American Society

How sports affect American culture

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Final Assessment

I chose to focus my blog on sports, specifically in relation to American society. Throughout history sports have made a significant impact on sociological issues and continue to affect culture by means of competition, exposure, and entertainment. I used to play sports frequently and now enjoy watching as a fan, so I was especially anxious to use this blog as an opportunity of exploring specific areas within the field. The separate essays allowed me to include important aspects that comprise sports, including athletes who play the games and media outlets who feed constant information to the public. Within these essays I hoped to supply interesting and informative, scholarly material as well as present a distinct and analytic point-of-view.

Overall I am confident that my essays are focused and achieve the goals outlined above, however they could still be improved. My essay analyzing ESPN.com took a unique look into the number one source for online sports information. ESPN is a very active site so obviously not every detail could be mentioned but I covered at least the main page and subsequent options. The essay would benefit from more actual written examples, but I was able to include a paragraph featuring one of Bill Simmons’ columns. The second paper involved choosing a candidate to argue in favor of receiving an honorary degree from USC. Initially I thought of several names and then researched their biographies in order to ensure that I was selecting the best possible choice. It became clear that David Robinson showed outstanding public service in addition to his historic career in the NBA. I was able to write about Robinson’s many accomplishments that I had never known about, while also highlighting his key athletic achievements. The challenge in this paper was integrating material from the Martin and Freedman readings. Freedman related to the process of selecting honorees while Martin was less obvious. I would have liked the quotes to be more integrated into the essay but I did my best to use the readings whenever appropriate. I prefer this paper to the other because it has a better flow and I enjoyed writing about Robinson because he truly is deserving.

I far prefer the process of keeping a blog as opposed to turning in separate essays. Having the essays displayed in order forces each to relate back to the overall topic and work in tandem with the other posts. Blogs utilize the Internet through links and graphics, making the essays more complete and interesting to read. In addition, the essays were much less tedious to write.